As adesso said right at the beginning of the Corona crisis, the stability of long-term forecasts has been completely turned upside down since the pandemic and has led to high volatility in forecasting trends and planning uncertainty for companies.

The APWG's new Phishing Activity Trends Report reveals that the number of phishing attacks has tripled from early 2020. APWG observed 316,747 phishing attacks in December 2021, which is the highest number since APWG start in 2004.

VoicePing, a Japan-based start-up established in 2019, focuses on developing and providing intuitive, realistic virtual experiences, including virtual office environments. As demand for immersive digital experiences grows, the company started actively developing a variety of VR-related services through a capital and business alliance with MetaReal Corp.

AI anchor Wang, the first AI anchor adopted by the Chinese Central Television (CCTV), has been introduced in March through a featured program and actively used in news and economic programs from this year onwards. The AI anchor of CCTV, with its natural voices and facial expressions, is an AI human made with DeepBrain AI's deep learning technology.

In November 1971, the American programmer Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, ushering in a new age of communication. Today, after more than 50 years, more than 300 billion emails are in circulation around the world every day according to Statista; thus, making emails an indispensable means of communication for marketers. The email heralded in a new age of communication that democratized international communication. Everyone could exchange messages and information worldwide in real-time and virtually free-of-charge, provided they had a computer with a modem.

SML Group, a worldwide leader in digital identification technology and solutions provider, announced the launch of its Technology Innovation Development Center (TIDC), a first-in-Hong Kong Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) inlay R&D center and production hub.

The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) has released a report, titled “Time to Compromise”, with Professor Paul A. Watters, Honorary Professor in Criminology and Security Studies at Macquarie University, Adjunct Professor of Cybersecurity at La Trobe University, and CEO of Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd, a Melbourne-based startup that develops Governance, Risk and Compliance software for cybersecurity that recreates the typical user experience of visiting pirate sites, with the view of exploring actual malware risk. In addition, it outlines some strategies to reduce risk for consumers and indicates regulatory measures which may assist in a large-scale reduction of malware infection, by reducing the accessibility of these sites and making such sites more difficult to operate.

IBM just announced its acquisition of Envizi, a leading data and analytics software provider for environmental performance management that builds on IBM's growing investments in AI-powered software, including IBM Maximo asset management solutions, IBM Sterling supply chain solutions and IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite, to help organizations create more resilient and sustainable operations and supply chains. Financial details were not disclosed.

Interactive visual marketing platform Wootag is expanding its business just a month after closing its $1.7 million Series A funding round from Wavemaker, Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund (CSVP) and SEED Capital.

Microsoft recently announced new security solutions to help customers strengthen visibility and control across multiple cloud providers, workloads, devices and digital identities – all from a centralized management view. These include the extension of native capabilities of the Microsoft Defender for Cloud to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), public preview of CloudKnox Permissions Management, and new security data analysis capabilities on Microsoft Sentinel.

Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, urged the industry to move to Zero Trust Network Access 2.0 (ZTNA 2.0) – the foundation for a new era of secure access.

MadManga will launch its first-ever manga-focused NFT (Non-Fungible Token) series this spring, with each series consisting of a collection of chapters. FOMO Stones will be the beginning of an unprecedented and exciting genesis to the MadManga adventure. The FOMO Stone NFT will be the first of its kind, empowering and bringing together manga fans and creators.

It is common knowledge that content creation is extremely effective in positively influencing the marketing success of a company. But it isn’t easy to come up with high-quality creative content just like that since more is needed than just publishing a few sentences on a topic or a post.

There is a hype around artificial intelligence (AI) for many years already and it has gotten another boost with the announcement of AI being able to write text on its own. How good such AI-written texts are and how the marketing industry can benefit from this technological innovation is, however, still questionable.